Drought, civilization and compromise

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	• The Time It Never Rained Elmer Kelton Forge Books, 2008 - 416 pages average customer review:based on 10 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Embarrassed

My face is a bit red. Matter of fact, I'm almost embarrassed to admit this. I am a lover of Western novels, but had never heard of Elmer Kelton. I have been visiting my daughter's (second home) ranch in Colorado and started doing some horseback riding - at the tender young age of 71! In connection with this I started a subscription to American Cowboy magazine, in which I found an article about Kelton. On my next visit to Barnes and Noble I looked for Kelton's books and lo and behold found a shelf full. I selected The Time it Never Rained as a trial read. I quickly discovered that I couldn't put the book down. I am now on a mission to read all of his works. Definitely five stars.

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The Time It Never Rained

Being a Texan in Texas during the drought Elmer Kelton describes in The Time It Never Rained, he seems to write about it first hand. I remember the deluge that ended the drought, and it was the experience I remember. I worked at the San Angelo Standard-Times while Mr. Kelton did, and his day to day newspaper work was a preview to his books to come. He has West Texas nailed down to a T, and I love all his books. But this one especially strikes home.

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A Lot More Than A Western!

Elmer Kelton was rightfully honored with a number of awards for this thoughtful piece of work originally published in 1973. While it is about ranchers trying to survive in one of those long droughts that seem to come more and more frequent to the West and particularly the Southwest it is much more than a story of survival. The nearest community in the book is called Rio Seco and while it only exists in our mind's eye Kelton describes it well enough that it could be one of thousands such communities scattered across Texas and the West. What came to my mind as he described it is the movie from a number of years ago called, "The Last Picture Show". The book is a beautiful study of evolving and conflicting cultures on so many levels. Kelton does a fine job of laying out the past and showing the future of changes between Angelo and Hispanic to include the continuing question of undocumented immigrants. Another is the "old school" way of looking at things rather than the new way. One of the focal points of the book is the role that government aid plays in changing groups such as ranchers forever. The "hero" (and I'm sure he never considered himself a hero of any kind) of the book, Charlie Flagg refuses the aid and thereby creates tension for himself and others around him. What's amazing, and something to which I consider an honor, is that I was reared in a time and community to have known men just like Charlie Flagg. This book has been re-published several times and I can understand why. Really much of what you read in "The Time It Never Rained" is timeless while other parts provide a beautiful look to the middle of the last century in Texas. While it's considered a western it's far from a "shoot'em up". Other of his books go there but that's for another review.

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Drought, civilization and compromise

This book is unlike any of Kelton's other works. The time setting is the 1950s and the seven-year drought we experienced during those years. The plot/theme is the end of the era of independence and freedom among cow men ... the time when they told themselves the drought forced them to sell themselves to the government to receive hay in return for their souls and their pasts.

I think of this book as a companion read to Abbey's, Brave Cowboy and McMurtry's, Hud (the book). All three writers were capturing a time and an attitude representing an end of an era when ranchers continued to curse the government out of habit while accepting welfare money as gracefully as the city poor they despised for doing so.

Kelton's book is as good as the other two, maybe better.

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First timer but live there

This is the first Kelton book I have read and the first fiction novel that I have read in decades. I felt like it was real to life and forgot it was fiction. I live there-West Texas, Panhandle. Surely there is a sequel. He left it open to finish out the lives of the major people involved, in at least one more book but ended this one as he should.

reviews: page 1, 2

?The Time It Never Rained was inspired by actual events, when the longest and most severe drought in living memory pressed ranchers and farmers to the outer limits of courage and endurance.??Elmer Kelton

Rio Seco was too small to afford a professional manager for its one-room Chamber of Commerce.

And Rio Seco, meaning ?dry river? in Spanish, symbolizes the biggest enemy of the ranchers and farmers in 1950s Texas, an enemy they can?t control: drought. To cranky Charlie Flagg, an honest, decent rancher, the drought of the early 1950s is a battle that he must fight on his own grounds. Refusing the questionable ?assistance? of federal aid programs and their bureaucratic regulations, Charlie and his family struggle to make the ranch survive until the time it rains again?if it ever rains again.

Charlie Flagg, among the strongest of Elmer Kelton?s memorable creations, is no pasteboard hero. He is courageous and self-sufficient but as real as his harsh and unforgiving West Texas home country. His battle with an unfathomable foe is the stuff of epics and legends.

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